Plucked from the depths: The moment salvage crews recovered black box from Air France crash site

The recovery of a flight data recorder - or 'black box' - and a voice recorder should provide clues as to why an Air France killed all on board when it crashed two years ago.

Here some voice apparatus is being fished out of the water, just off the coast of Brazil, where the plane nosedived on June 1, 2009, which led to 228 fatalities.

The image, published on France's BEA air accident inquiry office website, depicts a large metal basket with the orange flight data recorder being hoisted from the Atlantic Ocean.

New hope: A metal basket with the orange flight data recorder is hoisted from the Atlantic Ocean

Deep sea search parties found one of two flight data recorders from the Air France flight over the weekend, sources revealed.

The news revives hopes of understanding what caused the crash.

French investigators said in a statement that the flight data recorder had been fished up the black box at 10am on Monday and hauled up to the deck of a search boat later that day.

A voice recorder was recovered yesterday, and pulled out of the water this morning, meaning that the experts have two key components to piece together their enquiries.

Fatal: Divers shown two years ago trying to recover a huge part of the rudder of the Air France aircraft lost in mid-flight over the Atlantic Ocean

Vital: French investigators have found and recovered the cockpit voice recorder from a 2009 Air France flight as well as the black box

The memory unit was found by a submarine probing 12,800ft (3,900m) below the ocean's surface.

Experts have said without the two recorders there would be almost no chance of determining what caused the worst disaster in Air France's history.

Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed into the Atlantic northeast of Brazil after running into an intense high-altitude thunderstorm.

The condition of the instruments was not immediately clear. BEA officials have warned that the recordings may yet prove unusable, considering the pressure they were subjected to for nearly two years at such ocean depths.

Tragic: An undersea image released by the BEA shows the crashed engine of the Airbus A33

Slow and steady: Workers recover the flight data recorder from the 2009 Air France flight that went down in the mid-Atlantic

Eyes on: A BEA air accident inquiry official (right) surveys the handling of a flight data recorder aboard a ship

'We can't say in advance that we're going to be able to read it until it's been opened,' a BEA spokesman said.

Automatic messages sent by the Airbus 330's computers showed the aircraft was receiving false air speed readings from sensors known as pitot tubes.

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Investigators have said the crash, in a remote and deep area of the Atlantic, was likely caused by a series of problems and not just sensor error.

Air France CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon called the find 'yet another decisive step forward in the inquiry'.

Mourning: Friends and relatives of the Air France flight 447 passengers comforted each other after attending a mass in their homage at the Candelaria Cathedral a couple of days after the crash

The swing of things: The flight data recorder is shown being lifted from the bottom of the ocean

In a statement he said: 'It is my heartfelt hope that the data contained in these flight recorders may be used and provide answers to questions that relatives of the victims, Air France and the entire airline industry have been asking for nearly two years about why this tragic accident occurred.'

The flight recorders were recovered during a fourth search for bodies and aircraft debris.

Investigators targeted an area 3,900 square miles (10,000 square kilometres), several hundred miles off Brazil's northeastern coast.

Early last month French officials said the operation had found most of the Airbus jet, including its motors and more bodies of crash victims.

Determining the cause of the crash took on new importance in March, when a French judge filed preliminary manslaughter charges against Air France and aeroplane manufacturer Airbus.

Air France and Airbus are financing the estimated £7.6m cost of the latest search effort, but the French government is paying for the recovery of anything that is found.